Hands-on: app lets you “Bump” smartphone pics to your computer

The latest update to the proximity sharing app also sends pics to the cloud.

Snapping a quick picture on your iPhone is easy, but getting the image on your desktop can sometimes be a chore. Bump, an early iPhone app that made it easy to swap contact info by "bumping" two iPhones together, now lets you bump your iPhone on your computer to send a selection of images straight to your computer's hard drive, or even to Bump's photo-sharing cloud service.

I'll give you a scenario to illustrate how Bump can make the process of using pictures from your iPhone or Android phone a little easier (it's one I've run into personally on numerous occasions). Say you want to list an item on Craigslist: you snap a picture or two of the item using your iPhone, and you need to get the pictures to your computer so you can upload them to Craigslist.

You could connect your iPhone via USB, and use Image Capture or iPhoto syncing to get the images to your Mac. If you use Photo Stream on your iPhone, the photos will eventually sync to iPhoto and you can copy them from there. Because my sync cable is generally at the other end of the house on the nightstand, I usually e-mail the photos to myself.

None of these methods are difficult, nor do they take that much time. But all of these methods involve some friction—that is, they slow down the workflow from the time you snap the picture until it ends up on your Craigslist listing.

This is where the latest version of Bump comes in. The app had previously added a feature that would let you share photos between two smartphones or tablets—it works cross-platform between iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. The version 3.3 update (for iOS) released this week takes that sharing one step further, allowing you to virtually bump your smartphone to your desktop or laptop to wirelessly scoot the images right onto your computer's drive.

Just select the images you want to transfer (left). Once you bump your phone to your computer, tap "connect" to upload images.

Once you have Bump installed and set up—I'm not a regular user, but it took me about 2 minutes—simply swipe to the right once to access your images. You can select as many as you want to bump to another user, or bump them to your computer. I selected three pictures: one of the house, one of some sweet Kiss bobbleheads going up on Craigslist, and a gratuitous picture of the dogs.

Bumping uses location information—to determine that two devices are in close proximity—as well as the accelerometer to detect a bump. It also uses a connection between two devices running the Bump app to send the information to the right recipient. There's no Bump app for your computer, however—instead, it uses a lightweight Web app at https://bu.mp. You'll be asked to give the Bump Web service permission to use your location (Safari offers the option to only allow the use of location data for one day, if you prefer). And since there's no Web API to access your computer's accelerometer (if it even has one), you bump your phone on your computer's space bar.

The Bump Web app will need to access your location data.

At first, I found this seemingly simple process to be a bit tricky. I tried tapping my iPhone lightly on the space bar to no avail—the app didn't register a positive bump. Then I apparently tapped too hard, and the app gave me a helpful tip to use a "light fist-bump."

"A good bump is a light fist-bump."

Once I got the action down right, the images transferred almost instantaneously to the Bump website. Technically, the images aren't yet on your machine, though. You can drag and drop them to your desktop—or, as I'm wont to do, directly onto the Photoshop icon. In addition, you can click a "download" button to pull the image into your downloads folder. There are also buttons at the top right which let you download all the images as a single ZIP file, get a link to share them via Twitter, IM, or another method, or send the images to Facebook.

I wanna rock and roll all night, and download pictures every day.

The bumping process is a little hokey, but it did make it ever so slightly easier to get to the images and use them on my Mac. I didn't have to track down my sync cable, I didn't have to set up Photo Stream (which, for various reasons, I don't like using), and I didn't have to wait for the images to go from my phone through various e-mail servers, and finally back down to my Mac. Also, I wasn't limited to sending five images at a time—in one test, I sent 20 images to my Mac in about 10 seconds.

Gratuitous humorous image of dogs. You're welcome.

Reducing that friction may not be a priority for everyone, but when you just need to get an image or two from your smartphone to your computer, and in a hurry, Bump is a solution worth considering. As a side benefit, you'll still get the device-to-device sharing that Bump has always offered.

1. Photostream solved this issue. I don't know why anyone with an iOS device wouldn't be using Photostream on their own Mac/Windows computers as well at this point?

2. I just posted 4 craigslist ads from my iPad on Wednesday. I never turned on my desktop computer to do so, just used a free craigslist app. Why involve a desktop computer at all?

Even when transferring to a computer that isn't my own (and therefore isn't Photostream-enabled), you can use a USB cable the same way you would to connect a digital camera. No iTunes necessary. And if I didn't have a USB cable, I'd use dropbox or email.

I guess I am confused as to how this actually helps the workflow in the situation you outlined (uploading a pic or two to craigslist from your PC). I am particularly interested in this, because I am in this exact situation somewhat regularly.

The pics still have to go through the webserver, and unless I am missing something from your explanation, you still have to load up the Bump webpage, log in, do the "bump" procedure and then tell it to download the pictures, before re-uploading them to craigslist. It may not being going through an email server, but it is going through a web server, and still sounds just as time-consuming to me.

I can understand if you are transferring many photos, but for craigslist in particular, the most you will ever be uploading is four. And in the case of craigslist, there is a free app that allows me to compose ads and transfer photos directly from my phone.

The whole "bump" thing seems like gimmicky functionality. With NFC (near-field communications), there is a legitimate reason to "bump," since the transmitter and receiver must be in close proximity. iPhone does not have NFC.

In this case, bumping could easily be replaced by a button on the screen, since all it's doing is monitoring the accelerometer for a bumping motion and calling a "send" function. The bumping doesn't buy you anything.

Furthermore, you could just use Dropbox for exactly the same purpose... Send files to Dropbox from your phone and they magically appear in your Dropbox folder on your computer. No bumnping, no frills.

Kies Air on my Samsung Android phone is much easier than any of this, unless I'm completely misunderstanding what I'm reading. Connected to the same network, you can browse to the ip address of the phone from your PC or laptop or whatever, job done.

I understand there is at least one app that replicates this functionality for other Android devices. There must be something similar for iOS, surely?

Looks like more work than walking across the house to your cable, or buying a second cable, or using Dropbox or SkyDrive or Google Plus. The only thing this sounds better for is if you're wanting to put your pix on someone else's computer without a cable, so you don't have to log into any network from the computer.

At first, I found this seemingly simple process to be a bit tricky. I tried tapping my iPhone lightly on the space bar to no avail—the app didn't register a positive bump. Then I apparently tapped too hard, and the app gave me a helpful tip to use a "light fist-bump."

WTF?

Sounds like they spent way too much time on the cutesie 'bump' idea (which is clearly just a handshaking/security protocol). If you're dealing with your own PC then Dropbox or another cloud solution is clearly better, because the bumping thing sounds like it would get old fast. But I suppose this has some utility if you want to transfer pics to a foreign computer, where you don't necessarily want to go through the cloud login procedure.

I see your dogs are Rolling Stones fans, a lot of them about in the summer.

I can appreciate that people have other solutions that work for them (and I may try some of these other solutions myself). But that doesn't mean Bump isn't a good solution at all. As I stated in the post, the workflow removed much of the friction that other techniques I have used in the past had for me, including e-mailing the pictures to myself.

I know I'm likely more paranoid than I need to be on this, but are there any solutions like this that DON'T require accessing location services on the phone (or PC)? We tried dropbox for iOS but the "this app wants to access your location services" freaked my wife out and she uninstalled it almost instantly.

I know lots of people use it and it's probably fine but I'd really love to find an app similar to this that doesn't use location services at all. We're definitely in the "take pics on smartphone, email it to yourself" category.

I know I'm likely more paranoid than I need to be on this, but are there any solutions like this that DON'T require accessing location services on the phone (or PC)? We tried dropbox for iOS but the "this app wants to access your location services" freaked my wife out and she uninstalled it almost instantly.

I know lots of people use it and it's probably fine but I'd really love to find an app similar to this that doesn't use location services at all. We're definitely in the "take pics on smartphone, email it to yourself" category.

I believe the reason is that accessing the camera roll is somehow linked to location permissions—perhaps do to EXIF geotags? I have heard this exact same issue with other apps, including the recently released Facebook Camera.

Looks like more work than walking across the house to your cable, or buying a second cable...

Not I'm my experience. I thought it would go without saying here at Ars, but naturally YMMV.

Quote:

...or using Dropbox or SkyDrive or Google Plus.

I don't use any of those apps on iOS. Perhaps dropbox might be one to look at, though, as mentioned by others, since I already have a Dropbox account.

Quote:

The only thing this sounds better for is if you're wanting to put your pix on someone else's computer without a cable, so you don't have to log into any network from the computer.

Definitely a good use case. Remember that the app also works across iPhones, iPads, and Android smartphones and tablets. This particular feature was just the new one, and the reason we highlighted it here.

I can appreciate that people have other solutions that work for them (and I may try some of these other solutions myself). But that doesn't mean Bump isn't a good solution at all. As I stated in the post, the workflow removed much of the friction that other techniques I have used in the past had for me, including e-mailing the pictures to myself.

Well I guess you didn't explain it very clearly in the article, then, because it doesn't sound like it improved your workflow from your description of how the process differs.

I can appreciate that people have other solutions that work for them (and I may try some of these other solutions myself). But that doesn't mean Bump isn't a good solution at all. As I stated in the post, the workflow removed much of the friction that other techniques I have used in the past had for me, including e-mailing the pictures to myself.

Well I guess you didn't explain it very clearly in the article, then, because it doesn't sound like it improved your workflow from your description of how the process differs.

I feel like this paragraph explains it perfectly:

Quote:

The bumping process is a little hokey, but it did make it ever so slightly easier to get to the images and use them on my Mac. I didn't have to track down my sync cable, I didn't have to set up Photo Stream (which, for various reasons, I don't like using), and I didn't have to wait for the images to go from my phone through various e-mail servers, and finally back down to my Mac. Also, I wasn't limited to sending five images at a time—in one test, I sent 20 images to my Mac in about 10 seconds.

It was faster, I wasn't limited to 5 pics at a time, and I didn't have to go looking for my sync cable. And that's just the one new feature of the app—I can still use its other device-to-device sharing of photos and contact info if I want (or need).

Again, I said that "Bump is a solution worth considering," not "the only solution," or "the best solution for everyone." Is it too much to expect that Ars readers understand that different users have (sometimes wildly) varying needs, preferences, and use cases?

While what Bump does is clever, it's a lot more complicated than Dropbox's completely painless auto-uploading of pictures (on Android, at any rate - I presume the iOS app does the same thing..?).

Exactly what I was thinking. "If only there was a service that automatically uploaded every picture I take with my phone and made it easily accessible on every computer I own! Oh wait, I've been using that for a couple months already."

An issue I'm having with this app before it even gets installed is all the permissions it is seeking. why does this app need my phone number AND phone serial number? Been seeing that a lot on various apps with no real satisfactory reasoning behind that. Then there is the reading of sensitive data such as ALL of the contact info on my handset along with general info about the use of the phone(including public and private information) and what I may potentially be doing with the handset itself.

This looks really fantastic. I spend time wrestling with other methods of swapping photos from my phone to computers fairly often. Sure there are other choices (I even use the Google+ photo stream on my phone) but they don't feel as nice or work as smoothly as this does. Looks like it works fine via Chrome too.

Edit: I wish it went in the other direction, though. Should be easy enough to drag photos onto the page and then bump them the other way.

How is this anything different from bluetooth? My phone automatically syncs with my laptop when they are in range at the touch of a button (the bluetooth "on" setting on my phone), without a stupid app, a "bump", or a website in the cloud.

How is this anything different from bluetooth? My phone automatically syncs with my laptop when they are in range at the touch of a button (the bluetooth "on" setting on my phone), without a stupid app, a "bump", or a website in the cloud.

What application on your computer facilitates this process? What phone do you have that this is a built-in feature of the OS?

It's kind of fun just going to the bu.mp website, enabling location, and pressing the space bar over and over (with my finger, no mobile device involved) and getting yelled at by the site…

As someone asked and someone else said in the thread above, there is no logon required; the bumping *is* the security/handshake/logon. I can't imagine this is 100% reliable, since the geolocation from desktop computers (by IP address?) has rough granularity, especially for company offices that have a whole campus behind a single external IP address. Presumably they implemented a fail-safe policy for false matches, so multiple people bumping at the same time and what it thinks is the same place results in both of them needing to try again, instead of both of them seeing each other's pictures.

I know Chris is getting a lot of flack in this article due to the alternatives, however I have to say that the one reason I like Bump and the only real reason I would ever need it is because of its feature to send pictures directly from one iOS device to the next. In my rather large and extended family - we have a whole bunch of young kids and at family functions everyone never ceases to take out their iPhone and snap away. By the end of the event - we have several adults with a large number of photos and the inevitable "OMG!! they looks so cute in that - could you send me the pic?" I used to always email, but the problem is while I could be relied on to do so, others were not and chasing them felt as if I was bothering them for the photos. Bump just makes us all swap them there and then so should be the least hassle in my opinion.

So once again Apple tries to take credit for something Google did first: NFC.

Bump is only possible because of Near Field Communications.

Apple didn't invent this (just like Android had voice commands; Siri, first) and it sent the app that makes it possible, its the hardware.

How is "Apple" trying to take credit for this? It is an app, not part of iOS. In fact, if you RTA it states that Bump is cross platform. Also, there is no mention of NFC in the article, it mentions uploading to the Bump website. Finally, iPhone had voice commands before Siri as well. Perhaps a little more reading and a little less posting might improve your credibility (I really hope your 513 other posts are more well thought out than this one).

I don't like the "bump" method of phones communicating. I think it's sloppy and encourages bad practice in the care of expensive electronics. It's a cute gimmick, though.

At home, the fastest way to my photos (or other files on the phone) is via AirDroid.

Not at home, I use some kind of sync like SugarSync, Box.net, or even Dropbox if anyone still uses that. You can have these services automatically sync your photos, but I don't use their apps. I have all three of them plus SkyDrive, which hasn't finished its Android app yet, and Google Drive (although that app I do have), configured in ES File Explorer on Android, where I have common file-save folders favorited. It's then trivial to copy them to the sync server of my choice.

I wish I could set up custom shares in Android. For example, when I share a file, I can email it, but then I have to type who. I wish I could just choose "Email myself" or "Email my wife", and it would fill in the email address, and make the subject "Email from [App Name]" or "[Attachment Name] from [App Name]".

It's a "to each his own" and "your mileage may vary" situation and it's good that we have so many choices, but those are what works for me.

Sounds like they spent way too much time on the cutesie 'bump' idea (which is clearly just a handshaking/security protocol). If you're dealing with your own PC then Dropbox or another cloud solution is clearly better, because the bumping thing sounds like it would get old fast. But I suppose this has some utility if you want to transfer pics to a foreign computer, where you don't necessarily want to go through the cloud login procedure.

What if when a time not dealing with your own PC?

How about two guys/girls meeting each other the first time sitting at the Starbucks for a quick photo-swap and didn't bother with the Cloud, or may be one or both of them didn't have any Cloud accounts to started with? This would be a pretty handy and quick swap.

A feature is feature, treat it as a feature, useful or not.

However, there's a paranoid side of this feature. What happen when someone downloaded child porn pic onto our laptops or smartphones without us even aware of the downloads? That's my concern here.

The whole "bump" thing seems like gimmicky functionality. With NFC (near-field communications), there is a legitimate reason to "bump," since the transmitter and receiver must be in close proximity. iPhone does not have NFC.

In this case, bumping could easily be replaced by a button on the screen, since all it's doing is monitoring the accelerometer for a bumping motion and calling a "send" function. The bumping doesn't buy you anything.

Furthermore, you could just use Dropbox for exactly the same purpose... Send files to Dropbox from your phone and they magically appear in your Dropbox folder on your computer. No bumnping, no frills.

I may be missing something (I don't have an iphone or android phone) but your only two default options are email and usb cable? I must admit either would be too much hassle to use on a regular basis but why not simply share it via WIFI + whatever technology stack you want? Personally I use ssh on all of my pcs & phone.

Not true. GoodReader, for example, can wirelessly transfer any kind of file to your computer's web browser. Tap the little camera icon to open the media browser and transfer photos to the app. Then, send them to your computer. With AFP or SMB, sending multiple pix at a time should be a piece of cake. It can also connect to Macs using AFP and I believe it can use SMB/CIFS as well. It's like a Swiss army knife.

Incidentally, (and not intending to pick on Chris at all), I think people often underestimate what iOS can do with its 600,000 apps. Quite a bit. Including wireless file transfer, streaming and even Flash. Yes, Flash. "That can't be right, can it? (Check out the Photon web browser.)

After reading this I gave Bump a try but after prefer not to share my location or images with an outside server. Searched for something similar and came across HappyFingers. Although it seems like it is more geared towards dialing from a PC, it managed to do the image swap task quite well. Pretty easy to get going, just a 4 digit code to pair them up. Not as easy as solutions for my android though!

It doesn't use my location and needed me to run wifi for the transfers and they are very quick (image does not seem to go via internet???). It only works on my Windows box though so Bump may have to do for my Macbook.

I downloaded the mobile version a few months ago and was very surprised that the "bump" was strictly cosmetic, and that proximity has nothing to do with transferring files. From the way the app is marketed I assumed it would use Bluetooth.